The Black Whispered

Chapter 7 – Decided tactics

It wasn't like if was their fault, but she wished that Sousuke never opened that door. A recall order; the painful reminder that even as the commanding officer, even she couldn't have shore leave, without being interrupted. At first, this action not only annoyed her; but outright gave her the initiative to wonder why she even bothered to go to Tokyo at all; it was only bound to happen in less then a few minutes after she arrived.

Not less then a mere hour after their ordeal at the station; the three teenagers were sharing a meal for the first time in a few months before they got a knock on the door. On the other side of the door were five agents from the intelligence department were present, ordering their superior officer to come with them back to the base immediately. It was like a painful insult to all the hassle that came with her just getting here.

But it wasn't like Theresa wasn't expecting it, MITHRIL wasn't like a normal nine to five job with weekends; it was a constant level of alert, at any time of the day, at any time of the year. MITHRIL was an army and they didn't call it quits at 5pm. But it felt like life was teasing her now; even after the heroics that Sousuke performed for her, it all meant nothing anyway. She couldn't even stay the night. Although Sousuke wouldn't be disappointed; he felt more relieved then anything else.

The annoyance of her early recall was quickly erased however when she communicated with her base about why she was being dragged back to the office. She could've kicked herself for not being present at the time when the steel tubes opened themselves, and their claim that they were probably whispered? It was amazing how so much could happen in one afternoon.

Now she was in a private jet flying to the topical island office that was her life and prison from the outside world. She tried to hide her input emotions of annoyance as much as possible; although she did this quite badly enough that the flight crew were choosing their words carefully.

"Commodore madam, would you like some tea?" the stewardess asked

"Yes thank you" Theresa replied, with a slight touch of fake calm in her tone.

She continued to read her report from commander Mardukas regarding white and black. At the moment, they were in the hospital labs getting rest, but at his recommendation and 20 or so years of constant suspicion, he posted guards at stations all around the labs. Theresa wondered why he did that, was it his fear of the unknown or something. She couldn't blame him, as long as the girls he talked about didn't actually react to it badly.

Some thing however got her quirked about the details however. Both of the whispered didn't even seem to know when then were put into what the scientists had determined as a cryogenic freezer chamber. The girls hadn't even been tested or talked to yet, once the formalities were over, the girls were hastily taken to the hospital wing of the base and given careful medical checks, clothing and bedded down, with advisory that they were waiting for the commanding officer of the base to arrive back as soon as possible.

She was curious to meet them, both her head of naval operations and head of SRT operations were telling her that they had all the hallmarks of a whispered, but to not provoke them; no tests of any kind were performed at all. Theresa was glad they decided to wait who knows what kind of damage they could've implied if they did perform tests, and what of they weren't whispered? Just who could they be exactly?

Before the commodore could slip into another gaze out of the window, the stewardess came forward again with her superior officer's tea.

"Commodore madam"

"Thank you corporal"

She dismissed the stewardess and continued to gaze out of the window; it was 9pm local time, a dark and clear night sky, just like before when they first acquired the strange ship in the iceberg. Back then she was excited after such a long time to be doing something other then bored in her command chair bored stiff and chasing after fishing trawlers.

Then like a flash of events, she lost her command, promoted to a desk job, went to Tokyo and back, and learnt of a secret cargo on the lost submarine. Life was full of surprises; sometimes she just wished that she didn't have the luck of getting all the bad ones.

Location: Shinji Kazama's apartment. Tokyo, Japan

Time: 20:06hrs (+8hrs GMT)

Date: March 11th, 2006

If you were an anime otaku, you could've sworn that he was a gundam fan. If you were a computer nerd, you could've sworn he was a computer manic. If you were anyone else, you would've sworn Shinji Kazama was crazy. It wasn't like he cared what other people thought about him, Shinji had already come to the conclusion that no girl from his high school would ever step into his room anyway.

He always liked this sense of security; his room was a dedicated shrine to Arm slaves and military technology and his weak sense of shamefulness if a girl did see it made him try his best to avoid anyone female coming here. It was hard to tell that Shinji's bedroom was actually habitable; his bed was hidden under the hundreds of Arm Slave models and military magazines that he was possessed to collect.

Shinji sat down and logged onto to his computer to being his usual pass on the forums to scan the latest news. At the same time, he checked out his email inboxes. Ever since that strange night at Kyoko's place; he had been querying everyone about the mysterious white arm slave he knew himself was called the ARX-7. He viewed it as a personal right to research more into the rumours about the mecha that his undercover-agent-of-a-friend was piloting.

While all his online buddies were curious to why he suddenly was asking into the most mysterious arm slave myth of them all; they did as all arm slave fans did and look for the relevant information. Shinji opened up the first email; it was his friend d34lt4117. His email reply was short, just that finding data on the white arm slave was hard to find, as its sources kept disappearing over night.

Shinji then opened the .zip file containing all the downloaded information that could be accessed. It was quite a lot, most was repeated information on the same events. Shinji first looked at the events surrounding an event in Tokyo with a terrorist cell known as A-21. It took him almost an hour to sort the data out. Nobody had ever bothered to actually clean it up at all. But in defined detail, there were pictures, both blurry and distant, of a strange white arm slave.

He compared it to the pictures he had acquired from. While Sousuke destroyed his evidence on the laptop, he didn't know of the USB thumb drive, and the various CD copies of the same few pictures. Shinji then flicked through them for a moment, until he found the one with Kaname and Sousuke where the former was in the cockpit of a white looking arm slave while the latter was sitting on the arm joint just to the left.

Well, it confirmed it; Sousuke was the mysterious pilot that all arm slave fanatics would love to meet. Well, now he could believe anything now; his best friend was a secret agent, a girl had invited him to stay overnight at her place, that cute looking exchange student was the commander of a nuclear submarine, what other surprises would he discover soon? No doubt there were so many to start from, and it seemed that he had a lot to cover.

Before he continue his night routine of evening buzz on the IRC channels, his mobile phone rang, he read the screen for a moment, it was Kyoko calling,

"Hello, Shinji?"

"hai, speaking"

"Oh good, are you busy?"

"No not really" Shinji tapped a few random key stokes to pretend he really was. It wasn't that Shinji didn't want to talk to Kyoko; it was that he couldn't talk to girls without reverting to technical babble. Well, he had to at least take a chance, today was full of them, and so far he had managed to pull off each one, why stop?

"How can I help you" Shinji started

"I wanted to thank you for helping me figure out their secret"

"Sure…" Shinji was stalled for time, figuring out what he had to say "anytime"

"We made a good team figuring out what they were up to" Kyoko continued

'What is she on about?' Shinji wondered in his mind, it sounded like Kyoko didn't know what to say either, why was she so damn shy in front of him? Isn't it meant to be the other way around?

On the other end of the line, Shinji's assessment of Kyoko was almost dead on. The reality of the matter was that Kyoko wanted to thank for defending her and Mizuki, but she somehow couldn't come to say it. It just felt hard to say it. Not that it was impossible, just hard to imagine, even after she saw it first hand.

But that wasn't the only thing that was worrying her, even with the rush of finding out this big secret, she suddenly wanted to learn more about this strange world that Sousuke worked in, and who better to ask then the resident military wannabe otaku. However, it seemed hard for Kyoko to ask, you could blame her impression of him for that, a weak, scared human, who always cowered in fear when Kaname asked him a question or got angry at him.

You couldn't blame him, his conditioned reaction formed as a result of years of being a bully victim; so much for the son of an Arm Slave division commander, and a nerd otaku to add to that. But Kyoko couldn't complain about his ability to look for answers, and he was perfect in co-operation when they looked for the information.

"The thing is Shinji…" Kyoko said "I'm kind of interested more in Sousuke's life in the military; I was wondering what you could tell me about it"

'Your kidding me; what kind of set up is this' Shinji thought, 'since when was Kyoko interested in the military?'

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

Depending on which end of the conversation, it became an awkward mix of careful contrast as Shinji explained some of the basic details of the arm slave and how to pilot them, he didn't go into details that she wouldn't understand, and he both felt kind of annoyed and edgy on how he described the whole thing. He explained every answer to her questions in basic detail and in words and terminology a five year old could understand.

On Kyoko's end, she could tell that Shinji was trying to simplifying it down for her, but it helped her actually understand it. Shinji was careful to not mention a lot of things about the arm slave that he figured that Kyoko would get the wrong idea about. Like computer engineers of a previous generation, a lot of parts on the arm slave had weird names that didn't even relate to the part that they were named for.

After a good hour, it was starting to get late; even Shinji was surprised as their conversation started to flow more smoothly for a while. Eventually they both decided to call it a night and say goodnight.

"Shinji, thanks for the lesson" Kyoko spoke "if you want, I can come over and study at your place"

"It's okay…" Shinji panicked in his head 'I didn't here that, I just didn't here that!'

He quickly came up with an excuse to not allow her over, his dad was in the military after all, and expected his son to be heavily disciplined. It was a semi real fact, his dad didn't want a slacker in the family, but he was also at the same time trying to encourage him to get out more and there is more to life then the arm slaves that he worked on.

"That's too bad" Kyoko replied "how about you come over here instead?"

"What?" Shinji suddenly had those return feelings that this was a setup for something like blackmail or something else sinister "aren't your parents homes?"

"No… I told you the other day, they are on vacation for a while" Kyoko replied "come on, I promise I wont clobber you again!"

"Somehow I think that promise will go out the window"

"Hey, last time, you invited yourself!" Kyoko responded, in a joking glee. She was at odds with him in a non serious fight. But why was she suddenly so comfortable with that?

"Fine…I'll think about it" Shinji gave up and replied,

"Thanks…goodnight" Kyoko replied

"Night" Shinji hung up and took a long breath sigh.

He leaned back on his chair and then looked at the time, 9:30, they have been talking for quite some time, some surprise there considering. Shinji returned his gaze to the computer screen, which by now was littered with PM's from his friends wondering where the otaku went. His absence apparently was well noticed here and sudden disappearances were something of a rare norm on these channels. If someone knew too much, it wasn't too long before they were quietened

Shinji had evaluated that risk, and was obviously not going to stake a claim that he knew the pilot of the white arm slave. Such a story would be hard to believe anyway, and it would probably attach the attention of whoever Sousuke worked for, and he might quietly disappear too. It was a strange would, even stranger by the eccentricities that a normal person like Shinji was capable of finding. The world was truly a strange place.

Location: medical quarters 4f.3r, Merdia Island

Time: 01:33hrs (+10 hrs GMT)

Date: March 12th 2006

In the room, both white and black were sitting at the table in the room look around and wondering what was going to happen next. So far they had been told nothing, seen no one, and apart from the medical check which was at the very least basic for an inspection of their bodies. Both of them had been talking, but no words had been said.

'So what do you think of them' white started

'They sound pitiful, everyone here is either afraid of us, or thinks we're the enemy' black replied,

'that no surprise, how long did that man say, 66 years?' white replied 'you really think that humans would have evolved out of their nature to constantly suspect each other of being wrongful?'

'Even so, you saw how many men and women they had around that boat?'

White looked around their quarters for the thousandth's time, no bugs, no hidden cameras, nothing at all. Were these people even aware of who they were? White was sure that they were worried, otherwise why else were they so worried as to post men and women to guard that submarine they were aboard?

'The human mind needs to know what they see black' she started 'remember, they always have feared what they don't understand'

'Honestly do you think that these humans are any different from the soviet army?'

Black or white were well aware of their past, the last people they remember seeing was a bunch of Russian scientists and army officers looking at them in the glass tube waiting for the cryogenic freezing system to activate. That wasn't by their choice; the girls had worked well with them, explaining everything about nuclear technology to them like if they were children.

But it was to no hope, that man in charge of the Soviet Union, who was a personal sponsor of the project, had bigger things to take care of, like the German army advancing to the Russian home front. The Soviet Union just couldn't supply the red army with weapons as well at the same time provide the girls with the sundries they needed to perfect nuclear weapon technology.

So in order to protect them from capture, the girls were sealed away on a submarine they had acquired from the navy for the use of this project, and towed the submarine to just over the other side of the artic circle to be left to drift. One thing that the army hadn't thought of was how hard it was to find a silent submarine after the war was over. Four years later the war in Europe had ended and the Soviet navy was assigned to find their missing girls.

The submarine was never found and by 1947, the Soviet Union had already acquired the blueprints to building the atomic bomb from spies in America. In 1952, the leader of the Soviet Union returned to his pet project and demanded that they be recovered and put back to work. The Soviet navy sent everything they had to look in every part of the artic sea.

Again they couldn't find the submarine, probably because they didn't anticipate the fact that in less then a month of being set adrift from their soviet handles, the submarine had run aground on ice pack and was slowly being covered over by gradually adding ice to the top of the steel shark. The search failed and resulted in the 'disappearance' of several line officers in the navy.

Now it seems they had been found, but not by the same soviet scientists that they saw last. No, most or all of them would be dead now, if 66 years really did past.

'So what do you think this MITHRIL will do to us?' white asked,

'Probably the same, ask us about what we know, they all have'

'Well, lets wait and see...' white paused '…do you feel that?'

White sensed it first, but she didn't know how to interpret it. All whispered could communicate with each other and the only other whispered white knew of was black sitting in front of her, but now she felt another one and it was coming closer. How come she hadn't noticed it before?

'I feel another one of us is around'

'Don't be so human white' black said impassively 'we are the only whispered left in existence'

Outside the room, down the hall and down two floors in the elevator, Theresa suddenly got a burst of pain in her head. She suddenly dropped to the floor, much to the frightened surprise of the two immediate subordinates.

"Commodore!" Madukus caught her before she hit the steel grating face first.

"I can feel their using, it's strong" Theresa responded.

The trio of commanders exited the lift on the correct floor and started to walk down to the room where their two guests were from. Joining them was Kurz and Melissa to form up as guards for the commodore. At least 15 SRT personal were stationed on this floor all carrying rifles and smoke grenades. It was at the suggestion of the chief of the intelligence department that these subjects were kept under strict surveillance. Theresa would have something to say about that later, whispered could sense if they were surrounded by guards and that would make it harder for them to have trust.

White and black both now felt it and knew it was not their imagination, and before they were able to react, both whispered stopped their wordless conversation momentarily when they heard the door unlock and were about to meet the source of the other contact for the first time.

"Hello, I'm commodore…"

"A whispered!" black pointed at Theresa who undoubtedly was just as surprised as they were. Judging by the reaction that black gave, both Melissa and kurz automatically intervened to protect their commander and friend.

"…don't be so rude" white replied to her sister.

The moment left an awkward silence that the three whispered all felt a little disturbed by the icy situation that had erupted. It took a full minute before someone dared to continue.

"Stand down" Theresa told her two escort guards to move back into the background.

White nodded agreeably to the young girl's actions, at the same time surprised that she was their senior ranking officer. Theresa walked over to the table where black and white had retreated to once the guards were called off.

"I apologise for the security detail we have setup here, ill have different arrangements set up as soon as possible" Theresa started "I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself, I'm commodore Theresa, commanding officer here at the west pacific fleet base"

"And you are a whispered?" black continued to point out the obvious.

Theresa motioned for her guards and both her direct subordinate officers to leave the room. It left Theresa defenceless but on level grounds to talk to these two without them feeling threatened. It was a gamble that she had to play that none of the two were not violate violent types.

"you are indeed correct" Theresa confirmed for them "and I'm not the only one either, there is at least 20 other whispered world wide that are know to exist, although we believe that total number might be double that"

"Since when did humanity get to have more whispered?" black asked the strange question "and don't tell me that humans have finally evolved to that stage! I don't believe it for a minute"

White studied Theresa's expression for a few moments and realised something was amiss in her reactions. It was a correct analyst, even for all the intelligence that she had, Theresa was confused and completely unaware of what black was saying. An unaware whispered? Whited wondered if Theresa was really a whispered, she did have the characteristics thou, so something was out place.

Well, she would have plenty of time to figure out all the fine hairs in this mystery.

"Theresa, May I call you that?" White said

"Of course" the commodore replied "please, I don't really like to have rank get in the way with affairs regarding the whispered"

"Indeed" black said "so who are you then, and where are the Russians?"

Theresa took a moment before responding.

"My naval operations commander had informed me that you were told how long you have probably been encapsulated"

"66 years?" white asked

"Correct, the date today is indeed, march 20th, 2006" Theresa confirmed for her guests "I'm not completely aware on how you ended up where you are though, but you seemed to be important enough to have the pacific fleet of the soviet navy was about to destroy the iceberg that your boat was captured in"

"An iceberg? in the pacific?"

Theresa started to explain carefully the events leading up to and how the operation was carried out. It was both white and black's turn to be confused; they took their submarine aboard another submarine? And what was this arm slave unit she kept referring to? Theresa didn't see or forgot to explain this part better, but had promised to show them first hand the submarine and these arm slave units.

At this point it was getting quite late and Theresa was starting to feel the pressure of her body demanding for sleep. White and black who hadn't really done anything today but stare at the ceiling didn't have this same contrast of energy waste and were quite able to stay awake for some time. White was the first to notice Theresa was showing the signs of fatigue.

"Theresa, shall we discuss this tomorrow, black and myself are very tired right now and we wish to sleep" she lied, but given the manners and trust that this young commander had given them, white felt obliged to give her some reasonable favour in return.

"Oh course madam"

"Crystal"

Theresa was about to ask before she responded

"I'm known as white, but I have been known as crystal once before"

"Ok, crystal" Theresa converted mentally changed her title "I'll have the guards on duty here relieved except for a few which usually are assigned to this floor. Tomorrow, I'll have you transferred to guest quarters and give you a tour of the facility, are there any other concerns?"

"Non except you being a whispered" black reproached her original question,

Theresa tried her best to avoid the question so far. And as much as she didn't intend to ignore her demands, the commodore also had other concerns to attend to.

"Madam..." Theresa started "while I'm not exactly sure why this alarms you, please be aware that I would like make sure that I will investigate the matter if you deem it necessary"

Black tried to ignore the kind response, she was more annoyed that her host refused to just tell, but by her own evaluation' it seemed this Commodore Theresa wasn't even aware herself who they were or what she was herself. The commodore bid them a pleasant evening and left their quarters. Crystal looked over at black for a moment before starting to speak with her mouth.

"You could've been a little more polite"

"But she claims to be a whispered, and yet she isn't even aware of the truth!" Black replied, "and since when was your name Crystal?"

"A scientist did in 1892"

Location: Tokyo Jindai Municipal High School, Tokyo, Japan

Time: 09:02hrs (8+hrs GMT)

Date: March 12th, 2006

"Again!" Kaname hammered Sousuke's face into the ground with her foot.

What had happened could've had not been any more disturbingly funny. Once a month, a delivery man would come and deliver a supply of various office supplies, copy sheet paper, pens, pencils and the other sundries that teachers require to operate a daily routine at school. This however did go down well with Sousuke whom, when seeing a unknown man carting a large sum of boxes into the teachers office, placed his mind to suspicious

His war trained mind automatically trained belief concluded that a time bomb or chemical weapon was inside a box and that the enemy were going to try and take out the 'commanding officers of' the school. Sousuke made it his intention to insure that no one would be killed and moved the boxes into the open and detonated them with plastic explosives.

"How do you expect this school to function when you repeatedly blow up the supplies?"

Despite the regular interval occurrence of this, Sousuke had only blown up the supplies three times before and every time they did, the school had to re order the entire package, as well as repair damage to whatever else was damaged. Somehow each time, he managed to get away with his 'security measures'. Kaname feel weak on he legs again, somehow she felt like all those months ago she woke up in the wrong universe and ever since; has been forced to deal with ever growing reality of Sousuke's antics and other strange habits that attached themselves to this war minded otaku.

Strangely enough, everyone else didn't exactly take the same amount of dedication that Kaname had to getting angry at Sousuke for his repeated mistakes; they had their fun out of the few explosions that occurred on a daily basis. It had a unique tenancy to cancel classes, and a lot of students liked that. For the junior grades, it meant free time to extend their lunch break. For the senior year, it meant time to get some sleep that they lost from cram schools.

It gave the staff a headache as well, but it seems that the people that could expel Sousuke were also the same people that seemed to have the nicest cars in the parking lot recently.

"Sousuke, why did you just blow up everything in the office? And don't tell me there was a bomb in there because I don't believe it!"

"Terrorists take advantage of the fact that normal civilians never expect it to happen to them" Sousuke defended his already lost argument "this school is sloppy in not checking all items that import to this facility"

Kaname's rebuttal to his debate was in the form of another whack to the head. This fight had to end and Kaname had already used up all the energy reserved for class on Sousuke in five minutes. A recent problem that plagued her was that Kaname relied heavily on her energy to stay awake in class; any over use of it usually resulted in kaname falling asleep in class. If she was using all of her energy, first thing in the morning on Souske, this tended to use up all of the built up alertness and energy in a very short period of time.

At this moment, Kyoko and Shinji both arrived to school, to find that Sousuke had conveniently had created another day off for them. The teaching staff usually couldn't operate without their gear; and when this happened, they called for a whole day of study hall, or just cancelled school.

"…and to think I thought I'd be late for school today" Shinji said to himself,

What was so convenient was that the rest of this week was meant to be a holiday. Sousuke had just started it a day earlier for everyone, everyone but Kaname thought about how convenient this was for them. She again wondered who she annoyed in her pat life to get this torment and to be surrounded by idiots.

"Well, how's to say we go to the mall?" Kyoko said patting her friend on the back.

"Why…why…I hate going to school…but why?" Kaname sobbed,

"Be careful for what you wish for I suppose"

"I never wished for this!"

In the meantime, Sousuke answered his phone which started to ring momentarily. Shinji noticed this and paid attention.

"Uruz 7 here" Sousuke started, "understood…understood…yes commodore…understood…with kaname?"

He stood there listening to the other person for a minute being briefed in the spot. By this point Kaname noticed he was on the phone as well; the only time he ever used his mobile was to call her, or to be rung by MITHRIL. No doubt guessing it was the latter; Kaname prepared herself for his speech.

"As well?...you read the report I issued on the 10th correct?...understood…understood…" Sousuke glanced a look at Kyoko and Mizuki "are you sure?...they aren't…understood commodore"

'Tessa is making the call?' Kaname noticed the oddity that the commanding officer made the recall order instead of Sousuke's boss, kalian.

"Understood commodore, Uruz 7 out" Sousuke hung up "Kaname, may I talk to you"

"Sure, why not" Kaname replied "I'm right in front of you after all!"

"Okay" Sousuke continued "Tessa wants to have you visit her at the base, preferably be the end of today"

Kaname was use to the idea of Sousuke disappearing for a few days, so that didn't surprise her anymore. But never did Sousuke ever have to bring Kaname along with him, by the sounds of the conversation, it didn't sound like they were going alone either.

A/N: sorry for my lateness, but its here finally. It kinda feels weird suddenly dragging everyone out of school and to Merdia Island on a Tuesday, but give Sousuke a ton of TNT and he can make a week holiday appear.